


Twelve Tiny Tales (Teachable Moments) (with bonus Lesson)

by Gozer



Series: Tiny Tales Universe [3]
Category: Stargate - All Series, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Universe
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Crossover, Fanon, Ficlet, Friendship, Humor, Other, Slice of Life, Team, email format, life skills, shit they should have done in canon, thinky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 15:29:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1693349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gozer/pseuds/Gozer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Specialization is for insects.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twelve Tiny Tales (Teachable Moments) (with bonus Lesson)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Atlantis Program for Essential Skills Training](https://archiveofourown.org/works/296284) by [ArwenLune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/pseuds/ArwenLune). 
  * Inspired by [Lingua Pegasa](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1159890) by [ArwenLune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/pseuds/ArwenLune). 



> Many thanks to one of my favorite writers, ArwenLune, who wrote the original Stargate “world-building” fics, “Atlantis Program for Essential Skills Training” and “Lingua Pegasa”, which inspired and shaped these stories, and was also gracious enough to give me some useful concrit.

**Twelve Tiny Tales (Teachable Moments)**

**(with bonus Lesson)**

 

**By Teenygozer**

 

**1\. Are You Experienced?**

_From: r.mckay@sgc.atl.mil_  
_To: ATLANTIS MISSION SCIENCE STAFF_  
_Cc: e.weir@sgc.atl.mil, j.sheppard@sgc.atl.mil, r.zelenka@sgc.atl.mil, a.ford@sgc.atl.mil, d.bates@sgc.atl.mil, c.beckett@sgc.atl.mil,l.biro@sgc.atl.mil, m.kusanagi@sgc.atl.mil, p.grodin@sgc.atl.mil, teyla@sgc.atl.mil_  
_Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Training program for all expedition members_

_I know you are all busy, busy important and special snowflakes, but what you people fail to understand is this: I DO NOT GIVE A FUCK. So help me Christ, I will personally kill you all in the night if you do not attend your assigned Atlantis Program for Essential Skills Training (APEST) classes. I am ten thousand times busier than any one of you and exponentially more important than all of you put together, and if I have to attend classes in gun-play, punch-throwing, and general mayhem, so do you. I won’t even mention the classes I’ve been shanghaied into teaching—oops, too late, I mentioned the classes that will probably mean the difference between the continuance of your worthless lives or your terrifying and no doubt justified deaths. Also: DO NOT BE TARDY._

_Get it? Got it? Good._

_Note to the next lab rat who whinges to me on this subject: they will never ever find your body._

_Cordially,_

_Dr. Rodney McKay, Ph.D., Ph.D._

Back when the world was new and every quote was a fresh, as yet un-clichéd, axiom, Julius Caesar made the supremely duh-worthy observation that “Experience is the teacher of all things.” Rodney thinks he should have added, “Unless, of course, it kills you.” If it kills you, you don’t get a chance to learn anything; Q.E.D.

Rodney knows he is a terrifying teacher, but Pegasus is worse. Neither is forgiving, but at least Rodney’s students will survive to make future stupid mistakes.

 

**2\. Sink or Swim**

_Subject: First Contact_  
_Suggested by: Dr. Weir, Major Sheppard_  
_Taught by: Teyla Emmagan, Lt. Ford_  
_Content: A course made up of the collective experiences and training of a Pegasus native, a veteran SG team member, and an Anthropologist._  
_Includes among other things:_  
_\- Who we are - adapting the explanation to the situation_  
_\- 10 signs the encounter is about to turn sour_  
_\- This Ritual Is Incompatible With My Values - avoiding causing offence while maintaining your integrity_  
_\- The Strategic Withdrawal: when, how, and with what level of urgency_  
_\- Your Culture Is Not My Culture, But Your Culture Is Okay (Except When It's Not): the ethics of imposing your own values (Discussion)_  
_Time needed: 8 hours initially, with a monthly discussion meeting. We will also be assigning Dr. Jackson’s training videos for “homework” viewing._  
_Location course: Conference room or common room_  
_Target group(s): 1) Gate teams, 2) everybody with off-world clearance_

Daniel Jackson had seemed like an okay guy when John worked with him at the super-sekrit Antarctic outpost back on Earth, but John knew he was an okay guy who’d apparently started an interstellar war; then a few years later graduated to starting an intergalactic one. Not that John could cast stones; he himself had helped start two intergalactic wars, one of them pretty much his first day out.

It had made him wonder what in the holy hell the powers that be at the SGC were thinking when they chucked their people through the wormhole armed with what seemed like little more than a couple of P90s and a sense of the absurd.

Later on, once he had a few planets under his belt and had written and read a couple of hundred AARs, John realized that you could train and warn and make your people jump through hoops for the privilege of going through a Stargate, but in the end, at some point you were going to have to just let them go and hope for the best. There was no way to train for some of the crazy things that happened out there and, frustrating as it might be, sometimes the people with the worse APEST grades did the best in the field, and others who had passed their APEST classes with flying colors still fell apart out in a cold, cruel galaxy where the dangers were real and not on paper.

John knows you have to read the books, he knows you must take all the courses, but in the end, the only way to learn how to explore the galaxy... is to explore the galaxy.

 

**3\. Learning Disability**

_Subject: Emergency Procedures (AKA What To Do When The Excrement Hits The Ventilator)_  
_Suggested by: Dr. Weir, Major Sheppard_  
_Taught by: Dr. Weir, Major Sheppard_  
_Content: This course aims to familiarize all personnel with the various emergency plans, and their own roles in these plans. Includes Foothold, Infectious Diseases, Outside Attack, and General Emergency and Evacuation. It’s not so much “if” disasters are going to occur, but “when.” Let’s survive them!_  
_Time needed: 4 hours_  
_Location course: Mess hall_  
_Target group(s): 1) First responders, 2) everybody else_

Daniel’s mother and father and grandfather were teachers and scholars, but apparently book-smart doesn’t mean you can’t also be an idiot.

Melburn and Claire Jackson were crushed while supervising the placement of a piece of Egyptian art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art—and how moronic do you have to be to stand under a five-ton slab of granite while it’s being lowered into place? Daniel's maternal grandfather and only living relative, Nick Ballard, was apparently something of a butterfly, because he subsequently shied away from the responsibility of taking on a preteen Danny Jackson, leaving his grandson alone and defenseless in a world that didn’t take kindly to a kid who was smarter than everyone else, especially one who desperately wanted everyone to know it.

Daniel knows foster-care kids can carry significant baggage and worries that he harbors a deep-seated resentment of his parents and grandfather; it’s difficult for him to think about them without at least a touch of anger at their idiocy and self-centeredness for all that he’s tried to forgive them. He had hoped Ascending would cure him of that kernel of discontent, but really, he hadn’t Ascended himself, he’d only _been_ Ascended, and apparently you don’t need to be particularly emotionally advanced if someone else is doing the heavy lifting.

Daniel may find himself lurching from disaster to disaster as a way of life, but he wants to be more than a victim; he wants to be more than a survivor. He wants to be a better man. And it’s not just a case of “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” (if that were true, he’d be Superman by now); he strives to find the benefit for humanity in everything he’s learned, because using the knowledge he’s gained through tragedy for the betterment of the human condition means there was a point to it. Even so, he’s pretty sure he will never allow himself to become a parent; he knows he’s far too damaged by the hell he’s been through. He’s not even sure he makes all that good of a teacher: he knows he’s arrogant; there is still that little part of him that wants everyone to be aware of the fact that he’s the smartest person in the room. But he tries his best to share his knowledge, and in trying, he hopes there is virtue.

 

**4\. So You Think You Can Dance?**

_From: e.weir@sgc.atl.mil_  
_To: j.sheppard@sgc.atl.mil, r.mckay@sgc.atl.mil, r.zelenka@sgc.atl.mil, a.ford@sgc.atl.mil, d.bates@sgc.atl.mil, c.beckett@sgc.atl.mil, l.biro@sgc.atl.mil, m.kusanagi@sgc.atl.mil, p.grodin@sgc.atl.mil, teyla@sgc.atl.mil_  
_Subject: Re: Re: Re: Training program for all expedition members_

_Hello everybody,_

_Thank you for your input on the “APEST” training program. Please note that I have added three courses to the Critical Skills list, which you will find below. For now, I’ve chosen to list only life and safety-related courses, with one short course (Laundry Operations) that should resolve a major time drain on the part of Ops/Tech, who have better things to do than help people do their laundry._

_There were quite a few suggestions for courses that are more recreational in nature, and we are thinking about a format for all those useful, interesting or just plain fun subjects (an Open Space timeslot each Sunday, perhaps?)_

_Regards,_

_Dr. Weir_

Atlantis may be the most beautiful city in two galaxies, but there’s no cable TV and very little in the way of an internet, so even the workaholics find they have free time to fill after Elizabeth, six months into their occupation and afraid that certain people’s heads are going to explode, institutes a mandatory recreation period on days they’re not at DEFCON 1. In addition to the classes they all take and give to keep the place going, there are a number of just-for-fun classes that are very popular with her people as well as with their resident Pegasus-native guests.

Dr. Parrish had lived in Japan for five years and his course, _Zen and the Art of Flower Arranging_ , is a big favorite, even among the military who take it after Dr. Kusanagi informs them the Tokyo police have an official flower-arrangement course as part of their training. Elizabeth has to remind everyone they’re taking Dr. Biro’s knitting class for fun once the sweaters that result turn out to be a hot commodity on the Atlantis black market—honestly, is she going to have to take a crowbar to these people’s skulls to make them relax? Surprisingly, in addition to being resident puddlejumper-sensei and instructing a class called _Fighting Dirty: Sucker-punching for Scientists_ , Sheppard occasionally teaches the most popular course of all: _Ballroom Dancing._

Elizabeth remembers she’d had to strong-arm him into it that first time, with the help of a small squad of big-eyed marines and their very entertaining “oh, sir; please?” hand-wringing. Everyone’s favorite linguist, Dr. Trina Eidelberg, and Gunnery Sergeant Glenn Henderson were getting married in a few days, which meant Atlantis was going to have its first-ever wedding reception, and the groom had panicked when someone mentioned the obligatory “first dance with the bride.” His buddies’ idea of dancing was pretty much The White Man’s Overbite after a couple of beers, so they’d taken advantage of Elizabeth’s open door policy and come to her for help. At lunch, in between bites of stew, McKay casually volunteered Sheppard, who had immediately turned a thunderous look on McKay so black that she’d had a momentary flashback to the Genii Invasion incident.

The Look didn’t impress McKay. “What’s your problem?” he said, gesturing at Sheppard with his spoon, then digging it back into his bowl of stew. “His grandmother made him take lessons so that he could take one of his cousins to a cotillion,” he said to Elizabeth. “She was _not_ pretty.”

“Hey! I can say my cousin Mary wasn’t pr. . . uh, hadn’t quite grown out of her adolescent phase yet, that doesn’t mean you can! And besides, I’m sure I said this to you in confidence!”

McKay shrugged and scraped his bowl. “You didn’t tell me not to tell anyone. The teacher used to have him help out with the klutzes who weren’t getting it and offered him a summer job once the course was over. Pretty-major over here was a Dance Teacher For Money,” McKay finished that sentence in a sing-song, obviously enjoying the sputtering from across the table.

Sheppard initially put his foot down but the foot had lifted once Henderson caught wind of his CO’s expertise. Between the marines’ manly pleading and Elizabeth’s put-upon sighs, they made short work of Sheppard’s resolve. His one demand was that they had to find their own dance partners. If they couldn’t find a half-dozen victims willing to have their feet crushed by heavy marine boots for about six to eight hours, it wasn’t his problem.

It turned out victims were easy to recruit among the bride’s retinue and, after said victims were shod in the heaviest boots they could find, dance class turned out to be relatively angst-free, even fun, once McKay had been ejected. Elizabeth wondered on what occasion Sheppard would finally cease to amaze her.

The Eidelberg-Henderson reception was a resounding success; in fact, it was one of the few times they’d seen Teyla visibly taken aback. Having watched their DVDs and listened to their recorded music, she had formed the opinion that the people of Earth left the execution of the arts to professionals alone; it had never occurred to her that they were also a people who were willing to dance as amateurs.

When Cadman transferred in after reunification, she took to Atlantis culture like a near-duck takes to water. Within a week, she could be found teaching the how-tos of building various bombs, making C-4, and, oddly enough, tap-dancing. Elizabeth had never taken Sheppard’s class—she’d felt unaccountably shy about it for some reason and besides, she already had a ton of experience ballroom-dancing due to years of embassy parties... but she didn’t know how to tap-dance. On a whim, she took Cadman’s class. Stomping rhythmically turned out to be quite the stress-reliever and Elizabeth had never laughed so much in her life.

 

**5\. “You Never Learn, Do You?”**

_Subject: How To Talk Yourself Out Of Trouble_  
_Suggested by: Dr. Weir_  
_Taught by: Halling, Dr. Heightmeyer_  
_Content: Building on the First Contact course, this course will build valuable 'peaceful explorer' skills: conflict resolution, de-escalation tactics and how to recognize and handle cultural landmines._  
_Time needed: 8 hours_  
_Location course: Conference room or common room_  
_Target group(s): 1) Gate teams, 2) anybody with off-world clearance_

John’s learning curve upon taking over as military commander of Atlantis base was a steep one. Rookie mistakes meant people died. When the powers that be at the SGC were raking him over the coals for his errors, he could only take heart that most of them had occurred in the first few months, and that, despite what almost every authority figure he’d ever met had said, perhaps John _had_ finally learned after all.

 

**6\. “My Other Car is a Shuttlecraft”**

_Subject: Jumper Piloting 101_  
_Suggested by: Major Sheppard_  
_Taught by: Major Sheppard_  
_Content: Basic jumper operation. Getting comfortable with the interfaces, working with the communications array, pre-flight procedures, takeoff, atmospheric and space flight, basic maneuvering, using an orbital gate, landing, cloaking and shielding, and post-flight procedure._  
_Time needed: 2 days, with a bi-monthly refresher session_  
_Location course: Atlantis_  
_Target group(s): Everybody with the ATA gene, whether they're marine, scientist, or cook's assistant_

John always gets stuck teaching people to fly the puddlejumpers, but he doesn’t mind. He enjoys picking what he thinks is the perfect jumper for each pilot and, anyway, any excuse to fly is a good one.

Then there’s that time they took Teyla to Las Vegas, and they bought all the key rings in the gift shop at the Star Trek Experience, including a box they had in the back. Everyone who passes the jumper driving test gets a key ring. When O’Neill visits Atlantis, he hems and haws but it’s obvious that he kind of wants one, too; which is hilarious. John takes him out on a driving test so nobody can accuse him of favoritism and teaches the general a few things about the puddlejumpers he didn’t know, though for some reason he’s oddly disappointed none of them can time-travel. Then O’Neill screws around with the controls and that’s how they discover the puddlejumpers have an “easy listening” audio channel. The music’s terrible, but the cultural anthropologists are over the moon and Zelenka figures out a way to augment the sound files with their own MP3s, so John can play Johnny Cash as background music while they explore the galaxy.

John is more than happy to award O’Neill a key ring at the end of the flight.

 

**7\. Wraith 102**

_Subject: Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Wraith (But Were Afraid To Ask, Because They'd Suck You Dry, And Probably Not Answer Anyway)_  
_Suggested by: Major Sheppard_  
_Taught by: Major Sheppard, Teyla Emmagan, Dr Biro_  
_Content: ‘What we know so far' info session about Wraith. Includes physiology, behavior, Wraith culture, command structure and tactics, plus info on what is commonly believed about the Wraith among the people of the Pegasus galaxy._  
_Time needed: 4 hours, likely to be periodically repeated as we learn more_  
_Location course: Mess hall or common room, pathology lab_  
_Target group(s): 1) Gate teams, 2) anybody with off-world clearance, 3) everybody else_

One of the mandates of being an Air Force officer, and it’s literally right there in the regs, is that officers are responsible for the education of junior officers so that, when their time comes for promotion, they will be able to take up the responsibilities of becoming senior officers themselves . . . or even before their time comes, should they happen to find themselves the most senior officer during an emergency. This takes on even greater significance in the Stargate program, where one’s superior might be killed right before one’s eyes at any moment. It’s happened to John at least twice, three times if you count Elizabeth.

It may look like John wears his “commanding officer” mantle lightly, but he takes the responsibility very seriously. One example: John likes to give the Wraith simple, silly names—Bob, Kenny, Steve, Todd—to render them foolish and mundane in the eyes of his people. Name your fears, but don’t give them power. If John had been a Harry Potter character, he would have used Voldemort’s name in a constant and derogatory manner. He’d have called him ‘Tom Riddle’, or better yet ‘The Riddler’ or ‘Riddle-me-this’ or ‘Tommy-boy’. He’d have done it to the dark lord’s face, inquiring politely as to why ol’ ‘Flight-of-Death’ had named himself after a fart. John might be scared shitless, but the other guy will never know it.

The Atlantis dog-and-pony show, _Wraith 101_ , is a group effort: every scrap of knowledge they have is pooled, condensed, and shared with their Pegasus neighbors, who in turn throw their Wraith experiences into the pool. But not with dread reverence: John makes sure the classes are full of laughter, disrespect, and derision, because that’s a lesson, too.

John can’t say for sure how each and every one of his people will react the first time they see a Wraith, and he has no idea what they’d do if faced with a Wraith Queen; but he tries to prepare them for that terrible day as best he can, with facts and irreverent posturing, so they’ll be able to overcome the rigidity that comes with sheer terror and use their knowledge to take the bastards down . . . or die with dignity; not cowering in mindless fear, but spitting in the dark lord’s eye. It’s worked for him; he hopes it will work for them: a little irreverence might just give them the edge they need to survive.

 

**8\. Urban Legend**

_Subject: What Not To Eat in the Pegasus Galaxy_  
_Suggested by: Major Sheppard_  
_Taught by: Teyla Emmagan, Charin, Dr Parrish_  
_Content: What are commonly found edible plants, grains, fruits and roots, and how are they prepared? How do you recognize poisonous plants, and how do you find out if something unknown is edible with and without the use of Earth testing apparatus? A course in wilderness cooking, the Athosian way._  
_Time needed: 8 hours_  
_Location course: Mainland, also Teyla Emmagan, Charin and Dr. Parrish will submit a list of planets_  
_Target group(s): 1) Gate teams, 2) kitchen department, 3) anybody with off-world clearance_

The time comes for the Athosian highest holy holiday of the year, which means it’s time for Ronon to teach Sheppard how to hunt boar, just as his grandfather had taught him so many years ago, when Ronon was a child. They take along an Albanian private named Zameer who’d grown up in a sports-hunting lodge in Divjaka and a wild-hog-huntin’ good ol’ boy marine named Wilder “Sunny” McElroy from Alabama.

Sheppard is the only member of the hunting party who’s never hunted any porcine creatures in his life. “Hey, I grew up on a ranch. We had horses,” he says to Ronon, throwing up his hands in a ‘what can I tell you’ gesture. Should the expedition ever need a herd of equine-like beings broken to the saddle, Sheppard’s ready; in the meantime, he’s really looking forward to filling in this hole in his education and the massive barbeque that comes with success. As he puts it, he’s “game for game”, thus proving Ronon’s continuing thesis that Terran-born humans have the most nonsensical language in two galaxies.

Teyla says, “The meat is as nothing; what is of more importance is that you all return to us safely.” Her smile gives away none of her trepidation.

McKay has made it very clear he thinks it’s stupid they aren’t taking a puddlejumper and shooting “Hogzillas” from on high at a perfectly safe distance, but that’s not how Ronon was taught and Sheppard says that’s the weasel way of hunting. Rodney had silently sneered at them, apparently rendered speechless by their galactic stupidity, but not for long.

“Try not to pull a ‘Sheppard’ while you’re off Elmer Fudding it up,” McKay snipes; both relieved and a little pissed off that he hadn’t been invited.

“What’s up, Doc? Hey, you can’t make me a noun! I’m already a noun!” Sheppard snipes back, which leads to a round of business-as-usual bickering between him and McKay as they stroll towards the shimmering Stargate. Above the fray, Weir waves a graceful hand from the balcony like a queen and the hunting party steps into the liquid blue field.

Teaching can be a messy business. As Ronon had suspected, the short-term result is mayhem and a near-death experience when somebody who will not be named goes up a tree less than an inch from being gored by a wicked set of massive tusks. But what happens on M1K-439, stays on M1K-439, and he doesn’t mock Sheppard for pulling a ‘Sheppard’—after all, part of pulling a Sheppard is that last-minute save, right? Ronon remembers himself as a boy, terrified of the boar; the vast bulk of it, the smell of it, the noise of it; his grandfather giving him a gift that has saved his life on more than one occasion: teaching him to master his fear. Sheppard already knows how to do that.

Four sets of guns, one from above, are too much for the 2,000 pound boar, and it collapses to its knees and dies a kind of massive slow-motion death as the distant parts of its body get the message that the brain no longer works. Ronon is pleased it didn’t suffer; it was a clean kill.

“Sweet Jesus; next time why don’t we just go to the dinosaur planet and hunt a fucking _Tyranosaurus Pegasi?”_ Sheppard says, jumping down from the tree when it’s over.

“Not good eating,” Ronon says with a certainty born of experience.

Zameer and “Sunny” show up whooping and hollering, grins splitting their faces and knives at the ready. Time to gut the boar, leaving the entrails for the scavengers. Sheppard quickly masks his appalled look so as not to appear a wuss in front of his men. “We’re gonna need a bigger knife,” he says. No worries: Ronon has one.

The long-term result is dinner for one-hundred-and-fifty celebrants, boar stew and boar pot-pie for weeks, and a ceremonial handing-over of the tusks to the Athosian artisans, who will carve beautiful boxes and intricate bracelets for trade, as well as needles and pins for the sewers-of-clothing from the shards.

In the end, they do not refer to their honored prey as “Hogzilla”—the name settled upon the giant boar is “Urban Legend”, suggested by a photoshopped picture of a feral hog some 11 year old Terran human child was supposed to have killed back on Earth. On the Atlantis community board, next to the schedule for that month’s classes, there is a photo of the hunting party, covered in dirt and sweat and some blood, standing proudly next to and on top of Urban Legend’s ridiculously enormous corpse. It, too, is photoshopped, but only to get all four members of the hunting party into the picture together.

 

**9\. “Yesterday is Not Ours to Recover . . .”**

_Subject: Getting a Good Deal in the Pegasus Galaxy_  
_Suggested by: Teyla Emmagan, Dr. Weir_  
_Taught by: Teyla Emmagan, Halling_  
_Content: Because you need to be able to tell Tuttle- from Toba-root, and get a good batch, all without offending trading partners. Course includes trading culture and etiquette, and the accepted ways to propose, negotiate, confirm, and refuse deals, as well as information about the most common trading goods in the Pegasus Galaxy, their relative value, and how to assess quality._  
_Time needed: 8 hours, including a visit to a suitable market_  
_Location course: Common room / planet to be determined_  
_Target group(s): 1) Gate teams, 2) everybody with off-world clearance_

Now that Torren is walking and talking, Teyla considers how best to teach him his Athosian history, which is now intertwined with Lantean history. She chaffs with the knowledge that there is no class of fellow younglings with whom to share this history: where are the children of Atlantis? Is Torren always going to be the only child or will the Earth government unbend and finally agree that Atlantis is a colony in every sense of the word and not just a military base?

Yes, they can all be destroyed in but a moment by the Wraith, but every parent on every planet in Pegasus has lived under that threat for millennia, and they have still made the choice to have families, to carry on as best they can in the face of utter destruction, like new flowers poking through the rubble after a fire. If her people had had the same foolish attitude as the Earth government, the Athosians would be no more than dusty pictures on a wall for other people to find at this point.

There is an _Arabian_ word the expedition’s primary trade team uses: _taarradhin_ ; she has been told it means “I win. You win.” Teyla has made her deal, and done more than her part to help Atlantis survive and prosper. She only hopes she and her son have won their bargain in that deal as well.

__

__**10\. Body Language** _ _

_Subject: Fighting Dirty: Sucker-punching for Scientists_  
_Suggested by: Major Sheppard_  
_Taught by: Teyla Emmagan, Major Sheppard_  
_Content: Unarmed self defense for civilians, with an emphasis on keeping yourself safe. Includes pressure points, staying calm, choosing the opportune moment, and strategic thinking/picking the right battles._  
_Time needed: 16 hours initially, with a weekly session for gate team members, and a monthly refresher session for everybody else._  
_Location course: Gym_  
_Target group(s): 1) civilians serving on Gate teams, 2) civilians with off-world clearance, 3) civilian first responders, 4) everybody else_

Rodney is slowly becoming aware of the fact that he has worse body-image issues than your average 15 year old American girl. Ronon keeps hitting him between the shoulder blades and saying, “Stand proud, McKay!”, and he knows that if he keeps on sucking in his gut around Jennifer any more than he already does, his belly button is going to fall out of his butt.

Lieutenant Biscuit— _“That’s Sergeant Biscuiti, McKay!  At least get the man’s rank right!”_ —loves to videotape returning gate teams.  It's probably for future blackmail material, but Rodney has to admit, while it was a shock to see himself up there on the screen when SGA-1’s return from MX3-954 showed up as filler between Die Hard and Die Hard 2 on movie night, it wasn't necessarily an unpleasant one.

Cadman whistled between her fingers and shouted, “Lookin’ good, McKay!” and there’d been a chorus of general and appreciative assent. He would have blushed terribly if he hadn’t been round-eyed at the sight of himself on the screen—naked to the waist, his smoke-smudged tee shirt worn by the tiny, semi-conscious refugee he had in his arms. On the screen, he handed off the little girl to the in-rushing medics then stood there, dazed, until Sheppard came into frame to drag him off to the infirmary.

Jeannie emails John some old pictures from Rodney’s youth, and John thinks the skinny, curly-haired, big-eyed kid, invariably clutching a stack of books to his chest, is hilarious. No wonder Rodney holds himself like a much smaller man. He may look like he can bench-press a moose now, but his body still seems to remember the days of being shoved into lockers by bullies.

Rodney is only now becoming comfortable in his own body, learning to live in his skin.

 

**11\. Team Miyazaki**

_Subject: Common Sense and the City_  
_Suggested by: Major Sheppard, Dr. Miko Kusanagi_  
_Taught by: Major Sheppard, Dr. Miko Kusanagi_  
_Content: Interacting safely with Atlantis: a course on the automatic systems in the city, what they respond to and how the expedition interacts with them, with an emphasis on personal safety: what is safe to touch, what is not, and how to tell the two apart._  
_Time needed: 6 hours_  
_Location course: Specified lab and city walk_  
_Target group(s): 1) ATA gene carriers, 2) first responders, 3) everybody else_

Exploring Atlantis was a fun, if occasionally dangerous, activity to indulge in on days when a member of one’s team was on-the-mend from off-world activities that had gotten them grounded. Since someone on SGA-1 was usually walking around with a slight concussion or mildly traumatic flesh wound, the odds were in favor of Sheppard’s team being the first to trip over the neatest stuff, but it was Lorne’s team that found the one-person jet-assisted gliders.

“I think we win,” Evan said with a blinding smile.

“Holy crap, I think you win, too,” breathed his wide-eyed CO as Sheppard took in the wide sweep of white porcelain wings that shone in the sunlight, full of the promise of air-borne freedom and a very ill-at-ease Woolsey.

Evan’s heart had skipped a beat the moment he laid eyes on them; eight personal flyers lined up on a forcefield-shielded balcony just off the main penthouse of Tower 5—love at first sight! Impossibly delicate-looking yet incredibly strong, the wings were the very definition of awesome: better than the Jetson’s flying car, better than James Bond’s jet-pack; they made Luke Skywalker’s hover-car look like a broken-down jalopy. Evan was seized with a feeling he hadn’t had since his sixteenth birthday when he’d opened up a refrigerator-sized box holding a motorcycle, which his mother had just that morning sworn he couldn’t have until he was eighteen.

The wings are dubbed “MAVs” for Mobile Air Vehicles, but also for the one-person jet-powered “mehve” in _Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind_. It’s uncanny: the personal flyers are about the same size as Nausicaa’s mehve, have virtually the same seagull-wing shape, they can fold up for storage, they have a similarly-shaped center-mounted engine, and a set of only slightly more elegantly-designed hand-holds and inset foot-pedals. Evan wonders if Miyazaki, with his passion for a wide-open sky and the things that move through it, may not also be gifted with the ATA gene and perhaps a bit of prescience.

Some of the marines are pissy once it’s decreed that to qualify for the lessons needed to fly a MAV, you have to have both the ATA gene and at least a light-sport aircraft pilot’s license. They get that the MAVs won’t work if you don’t have the gene, but the marines with the gene don’t think the second rule is fair and that it’s some sort of dirty flyboy trick. They come to Evan to complain but he’s one with Sheppard and Woolsey on this; the wings are potentially dangerous in unschooled hands: they’re advanced jet-assisted glider craft, not jet skis. Which gives Evan an idea: maybe he can somehow, some way, get a brace of jet skis delivered to keep the peace? He makes the suggestion and they go away somewhat mollified. He doesn’t tell them there’s a marine-with-the-gene rotating into Pegasus on the next Daedalus run whose family owns a crop-dusting company in Kansas—let it be a surprise.

Testing proves the wings don’t work off world; in fact, they find that a wing will start beeping shrilly to warn its pilot that he or she is straying too far from the city, eventually clicking over to autopilot and bringing a wayward MAV back home to the balcony on Tower 5 if its pilot stubbornly insists on staying the course. Unlike Nausicaa’s mehve, there are no armaments hidden within; no flash grenades, no drone launchers. As magnificent as they are, for all intents and purposes, the flyers are completely useless; all they do is fly around. Evan is surprised, but darned if they haven’t discovered that, for once, the Ancients appear to have created something just for fun. He really didn’t think they had it in them.

 

**12\. Our Leading Expert**

_Subject: Crystal Tech and Personal Safety_  
_Suggested by: Dr. Beckett, Major Sheppard_  
_Taught by: a team of two or more consisting of at least one scientist and at least one ATA gene-carrier. If the scientist is a gene-carrier, there must be a gene-carrier of greater strength in attendance for oversight (safety first, people!)_  
_Content: What to do when you find malfunctioning technology in the city—specifically crystal/electronic issues. How to recognize dry and wet danger points and keep yourself safe, how to use the foam insulators, how to prioritize and flag the location for the Ops/Tech worklist._  
_Time needed: 4 hours_  
_Location course: Specified lab and city walk_  
_Target group(s): 1) First responders, 2) military personnel, 3) science personnel, 4) everybody else_

When the SGC finally goes public, John finds himself invited to a command performance/swanky party at the White House along with the rest of the notables of the Stargate program. He hates this sort of thing and tries to stick to the people he came in with, but Rodney and Zelenka dive into a group of adoring scientists and shed him like a drop of rain off a jumper’s windshield, and Woolsey seems to attract bureaucrats in three-piece suits in droves. John is not up for any conversations about the difficulties of life in a galaxy without cheap, disposable paper, so Carter it is.

In front of a group of people consisting of members of the IOA, several powerful congresscritters, and, and, and the Freakin’ President of the Freakin’ United States of America, Carter calls John “the military commander of Atlantis base . . . and one of **our leading Ancient experts** ” and John nearly inhales one of the maraschino cherries in his fancy drink. Naturally, he demurs like crazy and tries to back-pedal out of the conversation, but she places one delicate-yet-steely claw on his arm and reels him back in like a spooked horse.

To hear Carter tell it, John knows more than just about anybody about the practical side of Ancient tech, and she makes a pretty good case for it. He was always THERE during the never-ending classes and experiments, playing light switch and devil’s advocate, teaching the newbies how to be safe in Atlantis and throwing out ideas like soccer balls for the scientists to run with—and yeah, now that he thinks of it, he really does find himself co-teaching a lot of the classes, no matter how busy his day job keeps him. Attendees seem to find some reason to cancel if he can’t make it; Rodney likes to razz him that practically nobody shows up once they find out Colonel Photogenic isn’t going to be the gene-carrier for that class.

While Carter talks him up, much to his astonishment, he realizes it’s true: he has become an expert by osmosis and, yeah, he can live with that. He remembers swapping out malfunctioning crystals on the bridge like a pro on that Ancient ship the Travelers had kidnapped him to initialize.

Later on he finds out that most of the scientific papers published on Ancient crystals have his name on them as a junior partner, even Rodney’s, and, by his own admission, Rodney doesn’t share credit with nobody, not no how. But there’s John’s name just the same.

 

**Bonus Lesson: A Novel Experience**

_Subject: Lessons from Another Galaxy_  
_Suggested by: Dr. Weir_  
_Taught by: Dr. Fournier (Archaeology), Sgt. Stackhouse,_  
_Content: Not a course but a recurring off-record discussion session centered on experiences participants have gained in time working at the SGC, and later on also our own experiences in the Pegasus Galaxy. A frank exchange of experiences and knowledge gained during missions._  
_Time needed: 2 hour sessions, twice a month_  
_Location course: Common room_  
_Target group(s): Gate team members_

Daniel is amazed and a bit discomfited by how quickly Vala takes to the Tau’ri lifestyle.  She’s been on Earth not more than a year, and he’s pretty sure she’s already figured out more about living life to the fullest on the planet than he has after a lifetime of (mostly) living there.

Vala has an eBay account, which she’s only allowed to use for purchases since they caught her trying to sell a zat’ni’katel as a movie prop (her defense, “It’s broken! I would never have tried to sell a working one!” did not sway or even amuse General Landry.)  She regularly orders and receives packages from Amazon.com and a plethora of other internet sites, knows how to handle making a return or a complaint, and has a largely fictitious Facebook page that she uses to keep in touch with all the people she’s met on Earth in her travels. Daniel is embarrassed to admit that while he knows how to do a search with the best of them, he still has to ask Sergeant Harriman to pay for things online.

When a Google search for a book he’s been looking for for a good twenty years shows up on eBay as a Buy-It-Now for less than ten dollars plus shipping, Daniel jumps up from his seat in surprise, knocking over his half-drunk cup of coffee and spilling it on the floor.

“Are you all right, Daniel?” Vala said from her perch on his bookcase. She’d been leafing through a stack of catalogs she’d brought with her, waiting patiently for him to finish up so they could go to dinner.

“It’s...  I just.... My old professor, a book he wrote, for years I’ve been looking for it, and there it is!” Daniel said, waving a finger in a spiral pattern at the monitor. “I have to get....  I need Sergeant Harriman! Quick!” For some reason, he had the notion that if he didn’t buy it immediately, the book might disappear on him, as ephemeral as a rainbow, as imaginary as the pot of gold it leads to.

“Walter is off today. Really, you can get anybody to clean up that spill,” she said, picking up a Victoria’s Secret catalog and opening it. “Ooh!”

“He’s _off_? How can he be off?” The unfairness of it all came out in his wail.

“We can’t chain the man to his desk, Daniel, just because it would be more convenient for you,” Vala _tsk_ ed at him. “He has a life, you know.”

“But I need him to buy something for me on eBay!”

“For pity’s sake, I can do that for you,” she said, putting down the catalog and hopping off the bookcase. “Move over.”

“No! I, I mean... you can’t,” Daniel said, then stopped himself at her narrow glare.

“And why can't I buy something for you on eBay rather than Walter?” she asked, dangerously.

Why couldn't Vala buy him something on eBay? He knew there was something wrong with that, but he wasn’t sure how to articulate it or even what it might be. “I’m not sure,” he said honestly.

Her expression softened; a great relief because it was beginning to verge on ‘hurt’, and he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. “Look, Daniel; let me buy you the book now, and I’ll teach you how to buy things on eBay for yourself. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to buy this book today because we need to set up a Paypal account for you first and that can take upwards of a week. You’ll have to submit your banking information, then wait for a Paypal deposit of a penny or two to show up in your account to activate it; it’s a bit of a process.”

She stepped over the coffee puddle and took his seat in front of the keyboard. “You’ll have to come up with something for your eBay user name, mine’s ‘theprettiestpirate’,” she said, typing it into the field, and then her password. Less than a minute later, the book was purchased and would be his in three to five days.

“That looked pretty easy,” Daniel said, faintly embarrassed.

“Once it’s set up, it’s very easy,” Vala said. “Taking the first step is always the hardest part.”

 

**Thus endeth the Lesson**

**Author's Note:**

> FYI, "Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose" is a quote from U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson.


End file.
